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At 09:24 AM 4/30/2003 -0400, Rebecca S. Guenther wrote:
>As for indicating cataloging rules, we have thought of that and thought it
>was overkill to add. But if others think it important we could consider
>putting it in recordInfo in this next set of changes. We already have a
>list we use in MARC at:
>http://www.loc.gov/marc/relators/reladesc.html#rela040b
>I suppose we would say that if the element isn't filled in, no rules are
>used or specified.

I think the big issue is that much metadata does not have any cataloging
rules at all, or the rules are internal to a system and unknowable. But
when a MODS record is the result of a transformation it might be good to
know something about the original record -- i.e. was it a MARC21 record? a
PubMed record? a Dublin Core record? a Dublin Core record from a particular
database?

I wouldn't want to get too formal about this, but I can say that in the
OpenURL community, where the OpenURL is generated from some metadata on the
network, having information about the origin of the metadata is very useful
in terms of interpreting data elements and debugging problems. This is done
fairly simply, giving the vendor and the database:
elsevier.com:ScienceDirect; oclc.org:WorldCat. (Hmmm, since it's possible
to download record in a variety of formats, it might be necessary to
include the format. Drat! I'm trying to keep it simple.) This source
identifier, combined with a local record ID, would also allow one to go
back to the original metadata if necessary or desired.

kc


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Karen Coyle      Ph. 510/987-0567
California Digital Library
Oakland, CA      Fx. 510/763-2471
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